Stretch, grab a late afternoon cup of caffeine and get
caught up on the most important news of the day
with our Coffee Break newsletter. These are the stories
that will fill you in on the world that's spinning outside
of your office window - at the moment that you get a
chance to take a breath.

Los Angeles Animal Shelters May Put Dogs on Vegan Diet

Once upon a time, vegans were odd ducks. You might encounter the odd vegetarian here and there, but for a lot of people, vegans might as well have been unicorns. A lot of us just didn't find them "in the wild."

Then the internet blew up, the vegan evangelism spread, and now we are all exposed to them.

I'm the kind of guy who doesn't really care how others live their lives, but when others' decisions start infecting (yes, "infecting," not "effecting") government, I have to say something.

[D]ogs’ dinners could be swapped out for a plant-based food under a proposal before the Los Angeles City Board of Animal Services Commissioners. The change, which commissioners could decide Tuesday, would make the city’s shelter system the first in the nation to feed its canine residents a vegan diet, according to its chief veterinarian.

Supporters, who include musician and animal rights activist Moby and the feminist lawyer Lisa Bloom, say that is one of the selling points: to make L.A. shelter dogs the vanguard of a meat-free movement.

“If we adopt this, it’s one more thing that proves to the world that Los Angeles really is the progressive capital,” Moby, whose real name is Richard Hall, testified at the board’s meeting last month.

The idea was proposed by Commissioner Roger Wolfson, a Hollywood screenwriter who cited research that he contended shows vegan diets “eliminate” many health problems in dogs, which are omnivores. But he said rethinking the dogs’ meals is about far more sweeping matters -- the environmental effect of a meat industry that produces the main ingredients in lots of dog food and the ethics of feeding animals to animals.

“We have to embrace the fact that the raising and killing of animals for food purposes must only be done if we have absolutely no other choice,” Wolfson said at the meeting, according to a recording published on a county website. “This is about the long-term survival of every man, woman and child in this room, and all of the people in our lives.”

No, it's not. It's about trying to impose an ideology and a new reality on nature. Good luck with that.

I actually had this vegan dog conversation with one of our vets a while back. She admitted that it was definitely possible to keep a dog alive on a vegan diet, but much like with people (even more so, frankly) you really have to know what you’re doing and mix all sorts of different proteins and other elements in the right balance to make up for what they’re missing in their natural diet.

But that’s the key point here … it’s not natural.

Dogs are predators, descended from freaking wolves, and domesticated to help humans do things like hunt. For animals. They're not vegans. Their bodies look the way they do to make it easier to hunt for meat.

If someone wants to be a vegan, more power to them. But the problem is that far too many vegans aren't content to just live their lives that way. No, they have to pontificate about their own moral superiority. They push for people to adopt an unnatural lifestyle -- humans are omnivores, after all, not herbivores like vegans would make us -- and look down on people who don't share their anti-science values.

If Los Angeles moves forward with this, dogs will pay the price in health and happiness so progressive fascists can feel good about themselves.